Healing From Whooping Cough

Healing From Whooping Cough

My entire family came down with Whooping Cough/Pertussis. Here’s an update on how we’re healing.

The baby is sitting on the floor playing with toys.

This isn’t remarkable, babies do this every day. Only when they don’t, because they’re too sick to waste any energy playing.

It’s so easy to take that for granted.

We seem to be healing from our bout with Whooping Cough.

The kids are bickering a bit.

I’LL TAKE IT.

Really sick people don’t expend energy fighting. The bickering tells me they’re feeling better.

Victoria is doing much better. She slept better last night than she has in a week, and for once I got to sleep in the bed instead of holding her upright, rocking her in the easy chair all night.

We had one scary night. I panicked and called an ambulance. Not because she was coughing, but because she wouldn’t eat and I was worried she was getting dehydrated. (She wasn’t. They said she looked fine.)

I’m not usually one to panic, but this much sleep deprivation will make anyone a little crazy.

Spring will come. It will be warm and beautiful outside and this whole “Whooping Cough” experience will be something we wistfully remember.

“Remember that Winter of 2013 when we all got Whooping Cough?”

“Ah, yes. How did we ever manage?”

A few friends from our congregation, and my parents, have brought food over. Vat-like pots of soup, noodles and other easy to eat things. I haven’t had to worry about dinner for days which has been wonderful with a baby who just now TODAY has let me put her down for the first time.

The middle kids have had the easiest time of it. Actually Ruby doesn’t cough much at all. She did have Strep in the middle of all this, and that’s what was making her miserable. The day before yesterday she woke up at 11 am after having slept about 15 hours, and that made her turn a corner.

The hardest hit seem to be the two oldest, who are still sicker than anyone else. Zoe went back to school, which I thought was a mistake, but my vote counts for nothing since I’m the evil stepmother, even though I’m the one who diagnosed her with Whooping Cough.

As it turns out I was right that it was a mistake for her to go back to school so soon.  I ended up running to pick her up yesterday. She was out of it with fever. Too soon to get back out into the world.

We’re all coughing a little less every day. I think it’s going to take me a week to get caught up on sleep.

The other posts in this series:

1. Whooping Cough – first sick kid and positive pertussis result
2. Waiting For Pertussis Results – had remaining kids and hubby tested
3. We get test results (3 positive, 5 negative, 1 undetermined)
4. On the Mend
5. Post Pertussis